


for God spared not even the angels when they sinned, but cast down to hell, and delivered into chains of darkness

by space_pilot3000



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Character Study, Dubious Morality, Gen, One Shot, can be read as either hawkfrost bashing or hawkfrost apologism, so... be warned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25537714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_pilot3000/pseuds/space_pilot3000
Summary: Hawkfrost goes to StarClan at first.
Relationships: Ashfur/Hawkfrost (mentioned), Reedwhisker/Hawkfrost (mentioned)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	for God spared not even the angels when they sinned, but cast down to hell, and delivered into chains of darkness

He felt as though he were waking from a very long, unplanned nap on the Sunningrocks, his fur warm with a lazy summer afternoon’s sunlight, his throat dry from falling asleep with his mouth open, his head slightly hurting from the dehydration. Unwilling to let go the peaceability of sleep, he stretched, rolling onto his side and arching to press further into the ground. Some small part of him protested, demanding he stand up and investigate his surroundings, but Hawkfrost kept his eyes firmly shut, hoping to fall back asleep while the sun was still on him.

Yet his mind did not obey, quickly growing less fuzzy and more alert. He wasn’t on Sunningrocks, he remembered, because they had been left long behind in the old forest, their banks washed over by poisoned water, the trees surrounding them long since cut down. He didn’t recall finding any similarly-pleasant places for napping near the lake, so he must just be in the camp, stretched out near the stream. 

But when he finally opened his eyes and examined his surroundings, he didn’t see the RiverClan camp at all. Nor did he see the dark forest where his father roamed, which would have been his second guess as to his location. He found himself lying on soft, bright green grass near an elbow in a bubbling creek, one so shallow and so clear that he could see the colorful rock bed beneath. For just a moment he thought he must simply be somewhere out in the forest, until he saw the trees. Every one of them had smooth silver bark, like birches made of starlight. At the sight, the pain in his throat worsened, and he stifled a cough.

“It’s good to see you, Hawkpaw, though I’ll admit I wish it hadn’t been so soon,” a familiar voice said behind him.

Hawkfrost’s fur spiked aggressively when he heard the disrespectful nickname, and he quickly sat up until he was lying on his belly with his paws beneath him, facing the speaker.

The molly had silver fur which glowed with the same soft sheen as the bark of the trees surrounding her, scored through with dark tabby stripes. Her eyes were a bright blue to match the color of the sky on a late spring evening. With her long fur, her tail looked like a plumed feather.

“Is StarClan’s vision so clouded you didn’t see my warrior’s ceremony, or are you just being rude?” he said, baring his teeth. 

Feathertail didn’t flinch, just watched him with a gaze so impassive it almost seemed curious. “Under another leader you might still be an apprentice. Or perhaps you would have earned your name with Crowfeather, in the mountains; he’s only a few moons younger than you.”

Hawkfrost felt ruffled. Who was she to tell him what he had and had not earned? “Have you just called me here to StarClan to insult me?” he said.

Suddenly her expression turned rueful, and she turned her head to stare off into the woods. Hawkfrost followed her gaze, but saw nothing. “Well?” he demanded.

Her tail twitched uneasily. “Oh, Hawkfrost,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t called you to StarClan.”

His heart felt as though it stopped beating in his chest. Without thinking, Hawkfrost lifted one white paw to his throat. Something was missing, something he both remembered and did not remember being there. “What do you mean?” he said quietly.

“It’s probably best that we not talk about it at first. It’s a fresh wound; it'll be very painful,” Feathertail said.

Hawkfrost snarled, and he took a few steps forward, fluffing his fur out and arching his back. “Tell me what you mean,” he demanded. His face felt hot with his sudden rage, but for some reason, his heartbeat did not seem to have resumed.

Feathertail had been startled into jumping backwards at first, but she quickly regained her composure. She bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Stand down, Hawkfrost,” she said.

The sight of the normally quiet and composed molly snarling at him surprised Hawkfrost into backing off. As soon as he did, Feathertail flattened her fur. “You’d better get a drink. I imagine your throat doesn’t feel very good,” she said.

He obeyed, lapping up a bit of the creek’s water. But though earlier the clarity of the water had seemed a part of StarClan’s divine beauty, now he couldn't help but see it as a bit suspicious. When he was finished drinking, he stayed crouching by the water, clearing the excess droplets from his muzzle with a swipe of his tongue. He had not had a StarClan dream before. Why now?

Without turning around, he said quietly, “Please, Feathertail. Tell me what you meant.”

She came to crouch beside him, staring into the water without looking at him. The water was reflecting its ripples into her eyes. She sighed heavily.

“I shouldn't tell you,” she said. “They shouldn’t have sent me to greet you. I can’t help seeing Hawkpaw when I look at you.”

Hawkfrost flicked his tail irritably. “Well, you sure didn’t see that when I _was_ Hawkpaw.”

Feathertail’s nose twitched. “You noticed, huh?”

“And my mother told us that she had told you the truth. She managed to do that for us, at least,” he said bitterly. After a moment, he added, “…thank you for not telling anyone, by the way.”

“I would never,” Feathertail murmured. “All right, I’ll tell you.”

Hawkfrost sat up, and Feathertail followed. She still looked conflicted, staring into the smooth stones in the bed of the creek without looking at him.

“You… died, Hawkfrost,” she said. “You were killed, that is. You tried to do something terrible, and your brother stopped you, and… he killed you. You died on the lakeshore, Hawkfrost, at sunset.”

His heart still wasn’t beating.

He took a deep breath, but knew instinctually that he didn’t need it. That he was never going to need it again. He could hold his breath the rest of his existence and never even get dizzy. Feathertail’s chest, he noticed, didn’t rise and fall; she must have forgotten to keep breathing a long time ago. 

Questions were racing through his mind - _what did I try to do? why did Brambleclaw kill me? why does my throat hurt?_ but the one that came out of his mouth was, “And I ended up here?”

“Did you expect to be somewhere else?” Feathertail said, and she sounded genuinely puzzled, rather than her gentle, plying tone of before.

He wasn’t sure how to answer her. On instinct, he turned around, facing into the forest behind them. A dark fog lay over the trees in that direction, and a smell of rot that hadn’t been there before.

Feathertail turned, too. “Ah,” she said, “I see. Stonefur said he thought you might be visiting your father, but I wasn’t sure. Or I wanted to believe I wasn’t.”

He stayed silent. He had no need to defend himself. He had done nothing wrong, committed no crime. Tigerstar had called _him_ to the Dark Forest; it wasn’t as though he had gone of his own volition.

“You ended up here, Hawkfrost,” Feathertail said softly. “You never killed anyone. You tried to do the best for your Clan. You _deserve_ to be here.”

Hawkfrost drew back. “I killed Firestar. Didn’t I?” As he spoke, he remembered more and more. “He lost a life, didn’t he?”

Feathertail looked at him curiously. “He didn’t really die, though, and you knew that robbing him of one life would do nothing to the other four - you aren’t stupid.”

“That's still death,” Hawkfrost said. “He went to StarClan. He was only lucky that he returned.”

“Why are you arguing?” Feathertail said quietly. She drew her tail up and brushed it along his back. “Don’t you think you deserve to be here?”

He leaned backward until her tail fell away from him. “I just don’t like you lying to me,” he said.

“It’s the truth. Firestar is alive,” Feathertail insisted.

“I killed him,” Hawkfrost snapped. “Accept me into StarClan all you like, but he _died because of me_. That’s _murder_.”

Feathertail sighed. “That's not how we see it,” she said simply. “And there are others who have joined StarClan despite killing. We are warriors; death is inevitable, despite our code. Really, it’s remarkable how _little_ damage you did despite your warrior name,” she added in a lighter, teasing tone.

“I did plenty,” Hawkfrost grumbled. He turned his head, refocusing on the water rolling over smooth stones in the creek in front of him. An acute sense of longing swept over him. In the seasons to come, he would know this stream, and all the streams of StarClan, but he had died young. He had never learned RiverClan’s new territory or come to think of it as his own. His Clanmates would, some day. Without him.

“I’d like to have a word with my father,” he said unceremoniously. He stood and turned, tail swishing, toward the dark forest beyond the silver birches.

In an instant Feathertail leapt in front of him, her eyes wide with alarm. “You can’t,” she said. “Once a cat goes in there, they can’t return. If you enter the Place of No Stars - if you _choose_ it - you become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you.”

Hawkfrost wrinkled his nose. “I can’t even speak to him at the border?”

“Why do you even want to?” Feathertail challenged him.

Uneasily, Hawkfrost stepped back. He settled at the side of the creek again, turning his back on the dark forest. Feathertail appeared beside him once more, pressing her pelt against his - though he wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of solidarity or a quiet threat warning him not to try contacting his father again.

They sat quietly for a while. Hawkfrost, in trying not to think too hard about what he had left behind in the forest, found himself focusing on her - what was she thinking of? Was she judging him?

 _It’s no crime to want to speak with my family,_ he thought spitefully, even though he knew why exactly a cat might be suspicious of his desire to speak with his family. They had plenty of reasons, in fact. Some of them were even his fault.

A scratch was building itself up in his throat. He tried to force it down, but finally a series of violent coughs forced their way from his muzzle. His throat suddenly felt terribly dry, and he leaned down to take a long drink from the stream. Feathertail watched him, draping her tail over his shoulders.

Finally he felt a bit better, and sat up again. “Why does my throat hurt, Feathertail?” he said quietly.

“It was a terrible death,” she said. “A worse death than any cat deserves. We shouldn’t be speaking on it, not yet.”

Hawkfrost lashed his tail impatiently. “How long did it take for them to tell you how you died, Feathertail?” he said.

She hesitated. “A few weeks.”

“How did you feel during that time?”

“I thought I might have gotten carried off by an eagle or something stupid like that, on the way home from the mountains. Learning the truth of the matter made me feel a lot better, actually,” she admitted. “But yours… learning the truth is not going to make you feel better, Hawkfrost. Your throat hurts because it’s like… the last of the pain your body is feeling. Like the phantom pain an elder might complain about feeling in his long-lost limb. If we wait, it’ll trickle through you slowly. If I tell it all to you now, you’ll feel it all now.”

“I want to know,” Hawkfrost said simply.

“I know you do,” Feathertail said. Her blue eyes met his. “I can’t tell you. Not yet.”

He knew he wasn’t going to get what he wanted out of her, not now, so he rolled his eyes and turned back to the stream. “Are our hunting grounds good up here? RiverClan’s, I mean?” he said.

Feathertail seemed pleased with the change of subject. “I think so,” she said. “The waters are always teeming with fish as though it’s the first day of the thaw. There’s no RiverClan hunting grounds, though. Here in StarClan, all cats share the same space in peace.”

Hawkfrost’s fur spiked. “That’s what I said we should do around the lake,” he said. “What a whole lot of cats called me _blasphemous_ for.”

She ran her tail along his pelt, smoothing down his fur again. “That’s exactly why we’ve accepted you,” she said simply. “You’re a good cat at heart, and you had good ideas.”

Something about the way she said it rubbed him wrong. “A lot of cats got hurt for my good ideas, though,” he said.

“Like who?”

“Firestar, for one,” Hawkfrost shot back. An image flashed in his mind, a ginger tom choking on his own blood, his green eyes so wide with panic that the whites were visible - begging for help. He swallowed, hard.

“Was that even your idea?” Feathertail said. “You were meeting with your father - did he put that into your mind?”

“How does that make it any better?” he said.

“You were so young, and so alone, and your father told you you could have everything you ever wanted - if only you did one little thing. You didn’t even have to put the blood on your own paws, he said, only on the paws of your older, wiser, stronger brother,” Feathertail said. “I don’t know if any cat can blame you for it.”

Hawkfrost shifted uncomfortably. Yes, his father had told him all that. But he had made that final choice. And when Firestar did finally die, it hadn’t been at Brambleclaw’s paws at all.

“Mudclaw, then,” he said. “Stormfur counts too. Mothwing. Ashfur. And probably more.”

“You made mistakes and hurt people. Most of us do,” Feathertail said. “I made a mistake and hurt you. You have to look at the person as a whole, not the sum total of every action they’ve taken.”

“Fine, then what’s my whole look like to you?” Hawkfrost snapped.

Feathertail paused, looking contemplatively across the stream and into space.

“I think you were a kit who knew his father wasn't bothered with him and whose mother left him far too young,” she said finally. “Whose closest friends held him at paws’ length for reasons he didn’t understand until far too late, and who was relied on far too closely by the adults around him. Who became a mentor and a deputy, responsible for a whole Clan even if temporarily, when he shouldn't have even been considered an adult himself. Who tried, over and over again to make things better for the cats around him, and who was passionate enough to stand up for what he believed in, even at the risk of steep consequences. Who was manipulated by a terrible outside force since he was young and finally gave in, once, and paid his life for it.”

“That's absurd,” Hawkfrost snorted.

She lifted her brow. “Sorry?”

“That’s not the whole of me at all,” he said. “Those are just… things that happened to me. They have nothing to do with what I’ve _done_.”

“Don't they give a different context to your actions, though?” Feathertail said.

“Sure, but you can’t just ignore my actions altogether. That's not a _whole_ at all,” he returned.

“Then what do you think I’ve left out?”

The question took him aback for a moment, but Feathertail had not said it in the tone he might have - there was no hint of smugness or superiority in her voice. She hadn’t said it to win an argument, she had said it because she wanted to know.

“Firestar,” he said.

“We already talked that one over,” Feathertail pointed out. “I can show you a half-dozen more cats in StarClan who have killed without even trying. Some of our most respected warrior ancestors, even.”

“Fine,” Hawkfrost said. He tapped his tail against the ground, thinking back on his life. Something comes back to him, a little more easily than his hazy memories of ThunderClan territory, something he did only a few weeks before his death.

“Stormfur,” he says, “and that Tribe molly.. Brook. I drove them out so that I would have a better chance at becoming deputy, and I made Mothwing lie about a sign from StarClan.”

Feathertail tilts her head at him curiously. “Mothwing had a choice,” she said.

“So did I when Tigerstar started commanding me,” he shot back.

“That’s true. But you couldn’t have driven them out all on your own, either. When you and Mothwing came forward to condemn them, Leopardstar could have easily told you you were being foolish, and to stand down,” Feathertail said. “Didn’t you see it? Her and the rest - Blackclaw, Volestep - they were just waiting for an excuse to show their true colors. Your ambition happened to intersect with their prejudice.”

“I’m still responsible for what I did, and I contributed to what happened to your brother,” Hawkfrost said. 

“’What happened to him?’” she replied incredulously. “Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t deserve your harassment. But he just had to switch Clans. It’s not even a crime, Hawkfrost.”

He still felt as though he was right and she was wrong, but he could see that he was getting nowhere with this line of reasoning, so he thought back further, ready to switch tacks. 

“I caused a lot of strife around the lake,” he said, “when the Clans should have been working together to establish new lives. I told ShadowClan about ThunderClan’s badger attack and they ended up going to battle. I took Mudclaw’s side in an argument and escalated WindClan’s civil disagreement into a civil war.”

Feathertail rolled her eyes at him, and he blinked in shock. “Do you really think you’re so important that you’re responsible for all the trouble in the world?” she snapped. “You took a side in fight that wasn’t yours - so did many others, including the whole of ThunderClan when they threw their weight behind Onewhisker. And you shared information with an enemy patrol - big deal. I’ve done the very same.”

He blinked again, incredulously. Was she not listening to him? “This wasn’t a series of accidents, Feathertail,” he said. “I wanted the trouble to happen. I was doing these things to _cause_ trouble. I’m not an idiot - _I’m doing these things with intent!_ ”

He paused, panting, his voice having escalated to a shout half without him noticing. Feathertail’s ears were pressed tight to her head, but other than that she gave no sign at all that she was anything other than distinctly unimpressed.

“We don’t exile cats for intent, Hawkfrost,” she said cooly. “You’ve barely done anything.”

“I’ve done plenty,” he hissed.

“Well, you haven’t told me anything particularly impressive so far,” she said.

He whipped his head away and stared into the water, frustration seething beneath his skin. Silently, he prayed she would leave him and let him stew.

But instead she prodded him with one paw. “You know what your problem is, Hawkfrost?” she said, her voice suddenly low and contemptuous. She was speaking in a way he didn’t remember her speaking since he was young, when she used to bite back retorts every time Leopardstar opened her mouth. Her blue eyes suddenly felt almost as cold as his. 

“You think you’re special,” Feathertail continued. “Well, here’s the morning’s news for you: You’re not. You’re an ordinary cat who lived a pretty ordinary life that happened to get cut short. You’re not different just because of who your _father_ was.”

He spun around, baring his teeth. “This has _nothing_ to do with my father.”

“Sure,” Feathertail said.

Something about the way she said it struck him deeper than her whole rant a moment before. He bit down, hard, caught the tip of his tongue as he ground his teeth. Suddenly his whole mouth tasted of iron. He savored it.

“I’ve done plenty that not even your oh-so-watchful eye knows about,” he said under his breath.

Feathertail was in his face immediately. “Like what?” she challenged.

“StarClan, calm down,” he said, backing up several steps. “Are we having a conversation or a fight?”

She smoothed her ruffled fur and had the decency to look a bit ashamed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. We’re old friends. We shouldn’t be acting like this.”

 _We?_ Hawkfrost thought. _Speak for yourself._ But he stayed quiet, sat down again, and let her settle and groom herself for a while. The silence between them changed from awkward to comfortable again quickly. Feathertail may have had a short temper and a propensity for grudges, he thought, but in all her flaws she was smart enough to let go of things once she knew she was wrong. 

She quickly became occupied by making sure she had no hair out of place, so Hawkfrost watched the creek bubbling over the rocks, creating hills and valleys over the imperfections in the streambed. The water was shallow here, too shallow to be useful for anything other than a nice view. He longed to get in the water, to sink so deep only his nose broke the surface, to hear the deep and mysterious rumble of big water.

“I’d like to go fishing,” he said. “Do you know a good spot?”

Feathertail paused in her bath and sighed. “Yes, but we can’t go. I shouldn’t take you any further into StarClan’s hunting grounds; you need to take things slow while your soul is still healing from the trauma of dying.”

“What happened to me, Feathertail?” he said. Somewhere in the back of the mind he thought he could find the answer on his own, if he tried hard enough. But he needed her to tell him. He couldn’t do it on his own.

“Something terrible,” she said. “One of the most terrible deaths I’ve seen. You crossed the lake, and you trapped Firestar and tried to have Brambleclaw kill him.”

The word ‘trap’ made his throat itch like he needed to cough again, but he swallowed it down.

“And?” he said.

“I can’t tell you. You know I can’t tell you.”

He watched the stream gurgling by. His head felt fuzzy. Earlier he had felt warm and content, but now he found that his own body was cool to the touch and slightly damp, like prey that had been left buried underground for a few hours while the hunting patrol moved on.

“You still don’t think you should be here,” Feathertail said.

“Of course I should be here,” Hawkfrost snapped automatically. “I was just surprised, that's all.” He didn’t turn his head, knowing if he did he’d see a doubtful look cross her face.

“What else is it, that you think happened out from underneath StarClan’s watchful eye?” she said.

He hesitated, tapping his tail-tip against the ground.

“Mothwing,” he said. “I had her fake a lot of signs - a _lot_. And I faked a sign myself to get her into the medicine den.”

“Hawkfrost, if cats didn’t fake signs, the Clans would have fallen apart a very long time ago,” Feathertail said, sounding impatient.

“I hurt her, too,” he said. “By holding everything over her head.”

“Stupid and mean, but there are a lot of both in Silverpelt,” Feathertail said.

He wrinkled his nose. “Fine, then. Ashfur. I used him for my plans, and I took advantage of him. And…” Hawkfrost fell silent, unsure if he wanted to speak into existence what had been so long unspoken between him and the ThunderClan tom. He was dead, he figured. There was no use keeping secrets.

“I let him think that I loved him,” he admitted.

“I think maybe on some level you did,” Feathertail said. Hawkfrost shifted away from her, shooting her a doubtful look. Even with the most generous possible view of his life, he wasn’t sure how one could reach that conclusion. 

She reached out and covered his paw with hers. “Hear me out,” she said. “I don’t think you loved him the way he thought you did, but you must have cared about him. Maybe only by half, sure, but you did. I felt similar about Crowfeather. We were never going to run off into the hills and have kits together, but when the moment came, I wanted him to live. I was willing to give my life for his.

“If you didn’t care about Ashfur, why did you never say his name to Brambleclaw? It would have been easy to give him up and let him take the fall. You could have avoided dying, even. Why, if not because you loved him?” she said.

Hawkfrost drew his paw out from under hers. “I didn’t,” he said. “Not in the way he needed. Not in the way I was supposed to.”  
“There was someone else,” Feathertail guessed.

Reedwhisker, he thought, but he said nothing. A lot of warm summer memories washed over him at once, like the waves coming off the lakeshore when you were standing in the shallows. Reedwhisker, he realized, who was mourning him as though he had never betrayed him at all.

“He doesn’t know about Ashfur. He never will, unless someone tells him when he finally makes it up here,” Hawkfrost said, realizing the words were true as he spoke them.

Reedwhisker, who along with Brambleclaw and Mothwing was probably the closest he’d ever come to knowing what a real family was supposed to be like. And in return he had betrayed him, lied to him and never even had the courtesy to let him know.

“We all make mistakes,” Feathertail murmured.

But instead of reassuring him like it was so obviously supposed to, her words angered him. He was beginning to get fed up with this. “Why are you so insistent on rationalizing everything I’ve ever done?” he snapped. “Why can’t I have made mistakes? Why can’t I have hurt some cats?”

“I’m not saying you can’t have,” Feathertail said.

“For StarClan’s sake, I’m allowed to feel bad about things!” he said, his voice rising on each word until he was half-shouting. “I kind of deserve to!”

“There's a world of difference between regret and beating yourself up over things that aren't even _yours_ to regret,” Feathertail said sternly.

But he was done with her placid reassurances that she laid against every admission of guilt he made. “I have _plenty_ to regret,” he hissed. “Stop acting like I’m some saint. Stop acting like I’m some martyr. I’m the cause of a lot of destruction, you know! I- I’m the reason my brother is dead!”

Feathertail drew back, her eyes wide, and she looked - surprised, but not shocked. Something about that expression made his stomach ball up until it felt like the dark pit of an unfamiliar fruit.

“Brambleclaw?” she said, her tone genuinely confused.

“No,” he said. “My _other_ brother. But I guess StarClan’s watchful eye doesn't bother with rogues.”

He turned his back on her and willed her away.

But she did not leave. Her paw touched his back gently. “Hawkfrost, I’m… I’m sorry,” she murmured.

She was pitying him. He could tell it from her voice, and he _hated_ when cats talked to him like he was a thing to be pitied. If he was pitiable, he was weak, and if he was weak, he was dispensable. A sob story, but not something to get too worked up over. 

“Stop looking at me like I’m some wretched thing,” he hissed. “I am everything I have ever done, and most of it isn’t that great. That’s not the fault of Leopardstar, or my father or -” He cut himself off, afraid of what more names he would list if he kept going. How many cats could he blame for who he had turned out to be? “I am responsible for myself,” he said coldly.

To his surprise, Feathertail grabbed him by the shoulder, her claws pricking at his flesh, and turned him in a swift movement to face her, letting his skin tear. He yelped with pain, but she didn’t react, her eyes glowing with a soft silver light. “Why are you so determined not to belong here?” she said. “You got into StarClan, Hawkfrost. What more do you want?”

He was stinging, his shoulder throbbing where her claws still lay and his stomach curling into itself further and further until it felt so small and so heavy he thought it just might drop through his body. Why? Why had he spent all this time arguing with her? He had died and come here to StarClan and been told he was worthy of joining the warrior ancestors that weren’t even technically his by birthright - what on Earth could he possibly be fighting for?

He breathed deep and fast, trying to convince himself that she hadn’t terrified him by knowing him so easily, by making him question his entire being in just a couple of sentences. And he noticed her not breathing, not even now, not even a little bit. Her fur was glowing silver like the trees. She looked like part of the forest. Some small part of him hated her for it.

“You don’t even know me,” he spat.

“I know everything about you,” Feathertail said. “We’ve spent all day sitting here going over every little fucking _detail_ of your life.”

“You never even bothered to know me,” Hawkfrost returned. “You are just some disloyal half-breed with a wandering heart and a wandering gaze, and you have the _nerve_ to sit here and tell me what I am, but-”

Feathertail was on top of him in an instant, her claws digging deep down into his flesh as she pinned him to the ground. “I’m not going to sit here and take abuse from you,” she snarled. “If you want to fight, let’s go.”

He twisted out of her grip and ran, still breathing hard.

He would later tell himself that he didn’t know what direction he was going. That, in the heat of the moment, he wasn’t thinking, that he had never meant to give up his place in StarClan. But on nights when he wandered the dark forest alone, with every pawstep he knew the the truth, beating within him like the heart he no longer had. He knew where he was going. He was headed home, towards what was familiar. Towards the place where there were no more questions.

He crossed the border into the Place of No Stars.

As soon as he’d done it, he felt suddenly exhausted. He turned to face Feathertail, who skidded to a stop at the border, her ears instantly drooping. “Oh, Hawkfrost,” she said.

His pelt was no longer cold like death. The warmth of the living wasn’t there either - instead, he started to feel hot inside like he was on fire. He coughed once, twice, and spit out blood.

“Oh, Hawkfrost,” Feathertail repeated, sounding suddenly choked up. “It wasn’t - this wasn’t-”

“Feathertail, tell me how I died,” he demanded.

“I’m not supposed-” she cut herself off, biting her lip. “I. Okay.

“You - you caught Firestar in one of those fox traps. You managed to get it around his neck and all. And when you brought Brambleclaw, he refused to kill his leader,” she said softly. “Maybe you should have known better than to think he would.”

“Tell me, Feathertail,” he urged.

“When I tell you, it'll hurt like you’re dying again,” she said.

“Tell me.”

She hesitated, but continued. “Brambleclaw wouldn’t do it. He was loyal to ThunderClan. Moreover, he wouldn’t stand by while you did it. He dug up the stake of the fox trap, releasing Firestar. And - it was half an accident, I think, Hawkfrost. I don’t know that he wanted to kill you. But you attacked him again, and… that stake went right through your throat, and out the other side.”

As she spoke, the memories came rushing back, and so did the pain - a pain greater than any he had ever known. He took a deep breath, hoping to steady himself, but his chest rattled, his throat dried as he felt the air rush through an empty hole in his neck. He touched his paw to it.

The pain was debilitating. The blood was gurgling up in his throat. But last time, he remembered now, he had walked away with his dignity. The only thing that had stopped him was his death. Now, without that threat, he knew for a fact that he could withstand it.

On stiff legs, he walked, away from the border and into the dark forest.

He didn’t know how long he walked for before the pain started to fade into something manageable, but he did not stop once. He kept padding along, staring at his feet as they moved under him almost automatically.

Was he innocent, he wondered? Did it absolve him, that he was angry, that he was impulsive, that he was manipulated, that he was fleeing, that he was scared?

Or was the truth that deep down, he knew he had made every single choice that made him? Even with every single outside influence trying to push him this way and that, he had made the wrong choice every single time?

Was it not enough of a salve to be declared innocent by God themselves? Was it not enough proof that he had chosen hell of his own volition?

He kept walking until the black blood stopped gurgling in his chest and only came up in coughs. Only then did he stop for a short rest, but somehow he didn’t find any relief in it. Every moment he was here increased his exhaustion. He heard his own wheezing breath echoing through the empty woods. They were black as night and unfamiliar as the lake had once been, but without even needing to look around, he knew he had a long way to walk if he wanted to reach his father soon.


End file.
